Decree
The king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. In it, Jews were accused of trying "to subvert their holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." These measures were not new in Europe.
Some Jews were even only given four months and ordered to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Under the edict, Jews were promised royal "protection and security" for the effective three-month window before the deadline. They were permitted to take their belongings with them – except "gold or silver or minted money".
The punishment for any Jew who did not convert or leave by the deadline was death without trial. The punishment for a non-Jew who sheltered or hid Jews was the confiscation of all belongings and hereditary privileges.
Read more about this topic: Alhambra Decree
Famous quotes containing the word decree:
“Thy brother by decree is banishèd.
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)